The Morning Plum

* Big Senate races come into focus: With Obama set to discuss the economy in Ohio today, don't miss Dan Balz's overview of the matchup between former Bush budget director Rob Portman and Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, a key test of the Dem strategy of framing the elections as a choice between Bush's and Obama's philosophies.

* Also: Be sure to check out The Post's nifty graphic dramatizing how much hinges on what happens in battlegrounds along the Rust Belt I-70 corridor.

* And: After last night's primaries in Washington State, Senator Patty Murray will face former gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi in a battle that Dems see as a firewall against GOP control of the Senate.

* A new low: If Dems are framing the midterms as a choice between Obama and Bush economic policies, it can't help matters that a new Associated Press poll finds Obama's approval on the economy down to a low of 41 percent.

"I'm sure that they probably said that about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and Benjamin Franklin."

* Revelation of the day: Some Republican and conservative strategists have come around to the realization that GOP criticisim of the "mosque" risks making the GOP look captive to religious intolerants.

We teach tolerance by being tolerant...the tolerance we urge the Muslim world to embrace as we exercise our right to free expression, and revel in the glory and the gift of irreverence, is the same we must embrace when Muslims seek to express themselves peacefully.

* And: Maureen Dowd notes that "the ultimate victory for Osama and the 9/11 hijackers is the moral timidity that would ban a mosque from that neighborhood."

* Question of the day: Jed Lewison asks: By what preferred method would the anti-mosque contingent like to accomplish the removal of the mosque that's currently just blocks from Ground Zero? Wrecking ball, or angry mob?

* Catch of the day: Jon Chait catches a mosque opponent accidentally revealing that she doesn't view Muslims as Americans.

Inside every dark cloud there is a silver lining. While I have been humiliated and embarrassed by the response of some of my fellow Americans in the Mosque nontroversy,(yes they have a right to protest and make arses out of themselves, hate is legal in our country unless you add violence) at least we now know who the haters are and when you look at the list of how people have responded it's kind of surprising.

Oh it's certainly not a surprise that the despicable sociopath (sorry Kevin..not calling names here just applying accurate adjectives) Newt Gingrich is leading a chorus of inaccurate hate spewing losers, or that the Wasilla hillbilly was one of the first to jump on that bandwagon...it is an eye opener to see how others are reacting. Harry Reid...shameful...The N.Y. Dem Arcuri..hope he loses and is humiliated by his political pandering...
it has been a relief to learn that the entire Republican party hasn't lost their minds. Kudos to Scarborough, MacKinnon, Gerson, Parker and other conservatives for standing up for the right thing...our Constitution and for standing up against hate.

"Some Republican and conservative strategists have come around to the realization that GOP criticisim of the "mosque" risks making the GOP look captive to religious intolerants."

Oh. I think significant damage has already been done. The alienation of the Muslim-American community has been underway for a few years already. Their votes already started shifting away from the GOP. KO covered the protesting of mosques coast-to-coast last night. (The larger story being missed by focussing intently on Park51.) Long-term Muslim communities who have lived peacefully for a long time are all of a sudden being protested for no apparent reasons (Temecula, Murfreesboro).

Sam Stein had a good article yesterday profiling the Imam of the Park51 project, worth reading. He sounds to me like the kind of person who should be embraced, not vilified by the likes of Newt Gingrich.

Re Dems polling at low levels. As we've read and talked about here earlier, the Republicans are in the same boat but at the end even deeper under water (historic lows in approval).

As we've also discussed, there is in all of this a validation of the modern conservative hope that people will consider government as some species of enemy rather than as themselves, represented. Thus the incentive to impede the effectiveness of governmental operations.

As always, it is worth underlining who stands to gain from such a re-ordering of America and its institutions and that is those entities which have the capacity and wealth to gather more of the nation's resources to themselves while warding off all means by which the community might constrain their activities. Regulations on mining or offshore drilling? Oppression! Forcing tobacco companies to detail their research on the carcinogens and addictive substances added to their products? Coercion!

The GOP seems intent on alienating every segment of the American population other than elderly white males living in the Deep South. I admit to difficulty divining the genius animating this Southern Strategery but I sure hope it continues.

"the ultimate victory for Osama and the 9/11 hijackers is the moral timidity that would ban a mosque from that neighborhood."

No, actually, the ultimate victory for Osama Bin Ladin and the 9/11 hijackers would be a worldwide radical Islamic caliphate and the death of all infidels. The restoration of the Ottoman Empire would be a pretty solid win, if the worldwide caliphate takes too long.

Saying the ultimate victory for Osama and the 9/11 hijackers would that protestors drove a Muslim community center somewhere else in the city is like a Republican politician saying that people probably called George Washington and Thomas Jefferson "too conservative". Or something. The opposition to the community center is completely wrong-headed (in my opinion) and will, hopefully, lose out. But words still mean things. It's a Muslim Community Center, not a mosque. It's near ground zero, not at it, but if it was "at it", what difference does that make? Did these folks, even if they are fairly conservative Muslims, have the slightest thing to to with 9/11? No.

And would the community center not being built at that particular spot represent the ultimate victory for Osama Bin Ladin? Um, no. Not even close.

"We teach tolerance by being tolerant..."

Like the Native Americans taught European settlers to respect others and the land, to share in the bounty of nature, and live in harmony. Oh, no, wait, I don't think that's what actually happened.

Maybe it's just me, but I thinks it's naíve, and a little condescending, to think we're going to teach Muslims a lesson with our super-mega-tolerance. Call me crazy, but I was thinking that the mosque should be built because freedom of religion and association and self-determination and so on are guaranteed in the constitution, and because it's been approved by all the local planning and zoning people, because people should have the right to buy property, develop real estate, and conduct business (profit or non-profit) without harassment (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness), and because it's the right thing to do. Not because it's up to us enlightened secular Americans to teach those "backwards" Muslims important lessons of tolerance and understanding.

Former Bush speech writer Michael Gerson and Grover Norquist are two conservatives who have accurately pointed out that besides the Constitution and the right to develop private property issues...this whole Mosque nontroversy is a setback in the war on terror.

Newt Gingrich is shameful!!! He should take the time to learn more about Islam...as perhaps should we all..especially if we plan to comment on that particular religion. Of course anybody stupid enough to conflate 19 terrorists with all of Islam is not going to be intelligent, or perhaps non emotional enough, to understand that just as Christianity has many different sects from Catholicism to all of the various protestant denominations, Islam too is fragmented not monolithic. There are the Wahhabbis who have bred most of the violent extremists..and the Sufi's...more I'm sure but it's these two that should concern us. The Sufi's are peace loving and scare the Wahabbi's even more than we infidels. The Imam at Park 51 is a major leader in the Sufi movement within Islam...In other words he is on OUR freaking side and wants peace and cooperation...and so what do we do? Listen to scumbags like Newtie who lie and distort and then urinate on the man who would be our friend and the enemy of our "true" enemies.

http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/article1115779.ece

"Yet many of our leaders have a tendency to see the Islamic world as a single, terrifying monolith. Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative is one of America's leading thinkers of Sufism, the mystical form of Islam, which in terms of goals and outlook couldn't be further from the violent Wahhabism of the jihadists. His videos and sermons preach love, the remembrance of God (or zikr) and reconciliation. His slightly New Agey rhetoric makes him sound, for better or worse, like a Muslim Deepak Chopra. But in the eyes of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, he is an infidel-loving, grave-worshiping apostate.

Sufism is the most pluralistic incarnation of Islam — accessible to the learned and the ignorant, the faithful and nonbelievers — and is thus a uniquely valuable bridge between East and West."

"And: Maureen Dowd notes that "the ultimate victory for Osama and the 9/11 hijackers is the moral timidity that would ban a mosque from that neighborhood.""

And interesting aspect in all of this is the upside-down nature (how common that is these days) of the strong/weak formulation we see offered up by so many modern rightwing posters and commentators. Essentially, 'it is a sign of weakness and cowardice to not be terrified at the imminent prospect of Sharia taking over the world or of some group of Muslims announcing they are victors over us".

In this worldview, of course, Jesus' advocacy of 'turn the other cheek' is an example of wimpish and peeing-in-the-pants Chamberlainism.

Or take the earlier heroic imagery of the strong and silent American male. Clearly, the model that Limbaugh, Gingrich, Boehner, Kristol and so many rightwing posters have taken to heart.

Technically, "despicable" is always a subjective analysis. Saying it's accurate is on true insofar as it represents your personal opinion, not an assertion of universal truth. A sociopath is a specific thing, and, from a distance, it's a reasonable conclusion. I don't know him personally. ;)

@Kevin - But a worldwide caliphate is an impossibility in any realistic appraisal of states of affairs. Can we even imagine some set of circumstances where radical Islamists might gain control of the Oscar Meyer Weiner operation and institute Sharia within that organization? Invasion from outer space is possibly more imminent.

So, what is the best they can really, practically manage? If you ask the questions in that way, it seems the first hope must be increased membership and activism in their extremist cause. And that gets you to Dowd's point.

Forget the right. Civil War aficionados, re-enactors, historians and whatnot will keep that from happening. Remember what happened to Disney's proposed Disney America?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney's_America

BTW, the "sacred ground" argument is really a bad argument. That's a non-issue. Some of that thinking is why it's still a hole in the ground.

Frankly, it seemed to me that, obviously, what should have been done immediately was to rebuild the Twin Towers, pretty much as they were, only add a few stories. Just to make them taller. Preferably, one tower could have an extra story that includes a 9/11 Memorial, and another could have my proposed "Why America Effing Rocks" museum. As a conservative, and one of those flag-waving rednecks, my problem is not that they want to put a Muslim Community Center at the old Burlington Coat Factory, it's that we didn't get the twin-towers back up as soon as humanly (and safety-wise) possible, maybe just a little bigger and better.

Ah, well. I agree with some other folks I've seen suggesting that, if the Twin Towers (or something) had been put up by 2006 or so, and was an active business center, the community center in the old Burlington Coat Factory building would have been a non-issue.

I asked the other day on this blog where was George Bush. I offered praise of his stance while in ofice to try to emphasize we were not at war with Islam. Well, guess the ex-pres decided to sit this one out.

And Tomasky recently posted some of the quotes from Gingrich's ex-wife re how he has behaved and things he has said, followed by a technical description of the indicators of sociopathology. More than a little compelling.

It's always a danger, and a real one, to toss around such serious derogations of another. And those in power tend to be targets more than the rest of us. But along with that comes the reality that some sociopaths WILL move into positions of political power or reach for such positions as a consequence of their pathology.

More from the Annals of Justice in Upsidedownland. Woman tosses pie in face of Carl Levin and gets quarter million dollar bail:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/17/AR2010081702041.html?hpid=sec-politics

The hate-filled sites of Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer have fuelled the fight against the Cordoba centre in New York"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2010/aug/18/poison-behind-new-york-mosque-furore

Kevin: "No, actually, the ultimate victory for Osama Bin Ladin and the 9/11 hijackers would be a worldwide radical Islamic caliphate and the death of all infidels. The restoration of the Ottoman Empire would be a pretty solid win, if the worldwide caliphate takes too long.

Saying the ultimate victory for Osama and the 9/11 hijackers would that protestors drove a Muslim community center somewhere else in the city is like a Republican politician saying that people probably called George Washington and Thomas Jefferson "too conservative"."

I'd agree that this BS is not an ultimate win for bin Ladin...BUT... :o)

It sure does undermine what the State Department is trying to do currently by sending the Imam over to the ME on a "win hearts and minds" tour. It sure does undermine what our troops are trying to do in Iraq and Afghanistan....root out extremists and reach out to the rest.

It's naive, IMO, to think that the over-the-top rhetoric is not being heard in Muslim countries around the world. It is. And it's further naive to think that those who would actually want to harm our country would not leverage it for their own purposes.

Kevin: "I agree with some other folks I've seen suggesting that, if the Twin Towers (or something) had been put up by 2006 or so, and was an active business center, the community center in the old Burlington Coat Factory building would have been a non-issue."

THIS! a thousand times. There is nothing quite like a big gaping hole in the ground to remind us how wounded we are.

I think this is an interesting and potential win for Dems in November. Considering that Glenn Beck spent quite a bit of time vilifying the "99ers" (long term unemployed) the other day and the fact that many of these folks are already mobilizing, if we have the right message of job creation we may be able to win some hearts and minds. Of course it would first be incumbent to offer them more than just pretty words of job creation.

"Working America, a community-organizing affiliate of the AFL-CIO, launched a campaign on Wednesday to organize and motivate hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers to head to the polls in the November elections.

"Our experience as we go door to door is that people are looking for an explanation about why this is happening to them," said Nussbaum when asked about a potential Democratic backlash. "The knee-jerk response to get mad at people that are in power is in the absence of having a better explanation. You can talk about who's standing in the way of investing in jobs. The fact that corporations have way too much influence in government, that makes sense to people, and that when you compare voting records, when you look at for example a Republican bloc that has voted against every single jobs bill, including this unemployment extension, that's information people take in and act on."

Senate Republicans, in the name of deficit reduction, blocked votes this year on several bills to reauthorize jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed, causing extended benefits to lapse three times. The third lapse lasted for 50 days and stopped checks to 2.5 million people. "If they can stop the recovery from occurring, If they can create as much pain as possible, the cynical view is people will be angry and either drop out and not vote at all or vote against those in the majority," Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said in June."

The deeply misunderstood and constantly victimized Dr. Laura is quitting talk radio. Sad to see these voices or moderation and rationality sink in the barrels of ooze they found so warm and comfortable for a time.

Talk about the tail wagging the dog. The right's effort to create southern_strategy.V2 cooks up some juicy whites vs. "the other" issue, Fox faithfully devotes airtime and Rasmussen creates a knee jerk poll that republicans will then cite as proof that Obama isn't in touch with "Average Americans" (read: white males). Next its back to Fox with an attempt to redeem their infamous/hilarious "terrorist fist bump" debacle. Then, of course, its all we can talk about for a week or two. I know, I know, I stand with the guilty in this, but that's just a testament to how well this kind of crap works.

Are all things of national importance going to be dictated to us via partisan mouthpieces while actual governance falls into oblivion now?

One more thought since I'm on a hot rant and nobody will read this anyway: has anybody questioned whether all this incendiary rhetoric from the right is putting actual Muslims in actual physical danger? That rightradio has all but called for terrorists attacks on the mosque if they build it? People in this very forum have posted messages effectively saying that Islam is somehow uniquely incompatible with the American way of life. I know that what I'm going to say this is just about the basest rhetoric one can resort to but the analogous historical examples of this kind of "US v. THEM" argument carrying the day have only ever led to mass deportations, systematic cultural oppression or, genocide.

What better way to defend 1st Amendment freedom of religion than to have the Speaker of the House demand a Federal probe of those exercising their 1st Amendment right to free speech?
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41204.html

=====
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday said she supports an investigation into groups opposing the building of a mosque near ground zero in New York.

Pelosi told San Francisco’s KCBS radio that “there is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some.”

“I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded,” she said. “How is this being ginned up?”
=====

Does that mean that Pelosi wants Harry Reid investigated, too? Rep. Michael Arcuri (D-NY)? This should be fun!

One might think that Pelsoi would want a peek at where the Park51 will be getting its funds to build the mosque, especially since the State Department is footing the bill for a tour conducted by the imam at the head of the project. Instead, Pelosi wants the power of the government directed at people taking political positions. That goes well beyond any supposed extremism by the mosque’s opponents, most (but not all) of whom acknowledge that the property owners have the right to build on their lot anything that meets code, but want to express their opposition to the plans. Pelosi would take this opportunity to use the government as a thought police to silence dissent.

The silver lining in this dark cloud is that at least Leftists will finally acknowledge these Democrat fascists for what they are-- won't they?

"I cannot imagine that Muslims want a mosque on this particular site, because it will be turned into an arena for promoters of hatred, and a symbol of those who committed the crime."
--Al-Sharq al-Awsat (Al-Arabiya director)--
http://www.aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=21980

I don't know how many times I need to repeat the message before it sinks into the thick skulls of Greg and his Quisling toadies here-- but my patience is spent with these lying Leftist idiotarians.

This has NOTHING to do with intolerance of mosques and everything to do with the apartheid Islamo-supremacism of Cordoba House, in particular. Somehow, I think Greg (and his Quisling toadies) wouldn't support neo-pagans' "right" to erect eternal Crann Tara monuments next to MLK memorials.

But when patriotic Americans object to stealth jihadists-- and (yes) that accurately describes the Cordoba House cabal-- opening a 9/11 snuff porn vendor emporium (and jihadi recruitment center) on the hallowed graves of Ground Zero-- Quisling hypocrits shriek with indignation!

American Muslims may be the very soul of moderation. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable for Americans to ask for more from (allegedly) “peaceful” Cordoba House jihadists than insincere bromides and disingenuous whitewashing of uncomfortable elements of Islamic sharia law, as practiced by the Cordoba House cabal and their financial sponsors.

A genuine tiny minority of anti-jihadist Muslims may be found @
http://secularislam.org/blog/post/SI_Blog/21/The-St-Petersburg-Declaration

Americans remain breathless in anticipation of the sharia law vendors of Cordoba House supporting this genuinely tiny minority of their co-religionists-- but don’t hold your breath.

When will Quislings support Secular Islam advocates' right to live free from the sharia law intimidation of Cordoba House Islamo-supremacists?

Be advised these sharia-fascists have their eyes on your throat, too.

"Ye blind guides, that strain out the gnat, and swallow the camel!" [Matthew 23:24]

For those confused about Leftists support for Islamo-supremacism, don't be.

These Quislings support Islamo-supremacist desecration of Ground Zero because they objectively HATE America and have formed an Unholy Alliance with Islamo-supremacists.
http://www.amazon.com/Unholy-Alliance-Radical-Islam-American/dp/089526076X

In contrast, authentic (traditional) liberals fight against sharia law advocates of Cordoba House. For that reason, The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which is representing a New York City firefighter who survived the 9-11 terrorist attacks, said the vote by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission is deeply offensive to many of the victims and families of the 9-11 tragedy. The ACLJ has filed an Article 78 petition in state court to challenge the city's actions. The ACLJ will allege that there's been an abuse of discretion in the Commission's decision.
http://www.aclj.org/TrialNotebook/Read.aspx?ID=983

Sharia law advocacy is un-Constitutional, and more and more patriotic Americans (in both parties) are beginning to understand that. No wonder the (alleged) "bigotry" slanders from the Leftist-fascists (who support Cordoba House Islamo-supremacism) are growing more and more shrill.

Kevin Willis: There was a time when the US actually was revered in many quarters for its democratic values because we practiced them. I have seen documentaries on WWII and interviews where German POWs talked about how impressed they were with how they were treated and with what they saw and learned about democracy while they were prisoners here. We then helped Germany achieve a stable democracy. When we so clearly failed to live up to our own ideals in the treatment of African Americans, we finally did change our laws and customs and earned the respect of people abroad.

But every time we slip back into our uglier moments of nativism and racism (or adopt the methods of totalitarian dictatorships like torture and indefinite detention), it is noted abroad and makes it that much harder to argue that we have some kind of moral authority in the world.

Kathleen Parker is ablosutely right. We teach tolerance by practicing tolerance. The rest is just hypocrisy.

The problem is not just in Manhattan. The anti-Islam mosque protests have grown to eight states: California, Tennessee, Kentucky, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida, Connecticut, and throughout New York.

Yesterday, City Council members in Green Bay had to be argued away from not denying a mosque zoning permit based on Islam.

In Florida, one group seeks to burn Qur'ans on September 11, 2010. In Florida, we have seen a pipe bomb attack on a mosque, in Texas a children's playground in a mosque was burned down, while children are harassed, in Tennessee mosque properties have been vandalized and people have been convicted of arson attacks on mosques. On our national airwaves and media, we see and hear those who call for bomb attacks on mosques, and those who seek to spread open intolerance and hatred.

But in Washington DC, on September 11, 2010, a group of interfaith volunteers will be holding a public rally at Freedom Plaza at 2 PM for Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Worship, and Freedom of Conscience.

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